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Preface
Elements of Genesis

“Where are you going?” the boy asked.

“Far out to come in when the wind shifts.

I want to be out before it is light.”

Ernest Hemingway (1952, p. 3).

The first ideas for this work were jotted down on paper in 2016 while I was living in St. Petersburg, Russia. The initial project involved writing an article on Russian universities by only looking at the international rankings established by Times Higher Education. Many footnotes were already covering the content; limiting oneself to the Times ranking alone was becoming less common. Attending a workshop at MIT in Boston and a conference in Berkeley led me to rethink things. The thinking became more refined as the article grew (without, however, guaranteeing the transfer of proportions). Some ideas were specific to the Russian context, while others took on a more generic turn. The article became a short memo. Then, the idea of writing a book came up, along with the hesitations and doubts that such a long-term commitment implies. Therefore, while writing the book, we decided to make it short and compact to preserve our breath. The book continued to be enriched with new incisions and footnotes, as old ones migrated and mutated into sketches of new paragraphs and chapters. I was aiming for a maximum of 26,000 words like The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway 1952). The comparison with Hemingway ends there: I went overboard.

After a deviation of nearly 62,000 words, you have to stop yourself. This does not imply just writing the final word (or pause). It also means choosing the title and subheading. This is not necessarily the easiest thing to do, all the more so, since it is a matter of making the author’s wishes converge with those of the publisher. Lastly, “universities and civilizations” sums up the substance of the book quite well. While everyone more or less agrees on the meaning of the first term, using the second more risky, especially in contemporary academia, and if one takes Huntington’s point of view on these issues. However, to a large extent, the relevance of “the clash of civilizations” analysed by Huntington remains key today. Therefore, I assume responsibility for these choices, risk and title. Of course, the outlines of such a project should be specified; this is the purpose of the subheading. However, comfort dictates selecting a cautiously neutral subheading. A different choice has been made by weighing this cautious neutrality of the subheading against a less consensual approach. Indeed, the subtitle uses a word which, in recent years, has gradually become taboo in the academic sphere and beyond, like many other words, incidentally. This sulphurous word is “competition”. Yet, whether one likes the word or not, it exists. Indeed, there is de facto a global competition among universities to attract the best students, the best professors and the best academic leaders. Even if it existed in less visible forms before, the publication of the first Shanghai ranking in 2003 gave this competition a planetary impetus. Moreover, even if some have global objectives, universities contribute to and are part of the countries where they are established. Noting the absence or surprised by the weak positioning of some of their academic institutions in international rankings, several countries have initiated policies to remedy this situation. These actions give a geopolitical and even a strategic dimension to State policy in academic affairs. “Worldwide academic competition and geopolitics” specifies the relationship between universities and civilizations that I try to address in this work, where a sketch of the dynamics in force and of the variations of amplitudes is drawn, thanks to an analysis of world universities rankings over time. May this analysis also serve to shed light on the understanding of State policy in university matters.

The (methodical) reader traditionally begins a book by reading the preface. However, the preface, as is the case here, is often the last thing the author writes (before getting down to the “polishing” of the text and the editorial discussions). He explains certain choices, sets out his final thoughts and shares his more or less melancholy questions about what will happen next, as an existential void begins to appear.

Before the Foreword, which Jamil Salmi did me the honor of writing, the book opens with a quotation. This quote by Paul Morand would be more than enough to answer what comes “after”. However, it touches on a more substantial personal plan. It reflects, for example, what led me to accept responsibilities outside of France, positions where I could act, build and forge, whereas such opportunities in my native country would (at least at the time) have required too much time, taken on too bland forms, and been subject to too many hazards. Then, from there, to expose myself with curiosity to very varied ways of thinking and realities, expressed in multiple languages in many countries on different continents. This “elsewhere” gives an understanding and a life experience for which I am grateful. Not only because it feeds into this book. To me, “elsewhere” is more beautiful than “tomorrow” but has never meant that “yesterday” was to be banished, let alone to forget the country where I was born, and in which I participate. At the opposite end of the contemporary spectrum – the paradoxical (and often little-known) result of globalization’s encounter with Karl Marx – I am not a citizen of the world, just as no one else is. Some people claim that, that’s all. By talking about important phenomena in countries that are beacons of civilizations, by talking about the dynamism of some and the weaknesses or inconsistencies of others, by showing what is happening elsewhere, how it is happening and with what impact, this book also revolves around France¹.

What will happen after this book? Maybe this work will be taken up again someday. The first way of revising this book would of course be to update the chapters. The second way, compatible with the first and favored by the “modular” architecture of the book, would be to add new chapters focusing on certain countries that are not fully covered here, or on certain civilizations. In this case, a balance would have to be found between priority and temptation. Indeed, civilizations and their flagship countries (in a sense that will be given below), or their important countries, are neither equally prioritized in general, nor equally tempting to me in particular. In the event of a divergence between the intensities of the two notions – a tempting, but not priority country versus a priority country, but less tempting – I will probably give nature its rights and thus give temptation primacy over priority. A third way would be to take certain footnotes or incisions and promote them as new chapters, or even new books. Topics are indeed abundant. It would be useful to carry out studies – some of them comparative – on university financing models and the related issue of student debt²; on the societal impact and global trends of universities focused on the transmission of knowledge, and not on its creation; on thematic rankings of leading universities, particularly by looking at countries that heavily invest in deep learning technologies, artificial intelligence and data storage capacities; on national university systems³ (where a number of small countries would probably do well, if not very well); on the evaluation and accreditation of university and research structures (a separate but related topic from the one we are dealing with here); and on the challenge that the reader will discover at the end of this book.

We shall see.

Whatever happens, from the summer of 2019, with its alternating heat waves and torrential downpours, to the coronavirus in the spring of 2020, the fine-tuning of this book has been carried out with enthusiasm and without any melancholy. My marriage to Anna in Normandy had a lot to do with it.

Barneville – LUXEMBOURG

August 2020